Chapter 4: Seeing Her Differently

Updated Jan 14, 2026 • ~12 min read

POV: Reid

Day two of being snowed in with Hailey Brooks, and I was starting to realize my initial assessment had been wrong.

She wasn’t just aggressively cheerful. She was aggressively coping.

I noticed it in small things: The way she organized and reorganized the food supplies when she was anxious. The way her smile brightened when she was most uncomfortable. The way she said “everything’s fine” like a mantra she was trying to believe.

I recognized it because I did the same thing. Just quieter. Isolation instead of performance. Silence instead of sunshine.

Different armor. Same fear.

I didn’t want to recognize it. Didn’t want to see past her performance to the person underneath. Because seeing meant caring and caring meant—

Meant risk. Meant failure. Meant the possibility of hurting someone else through my own inadequacy.

But stuck in this cabin with her, watching her try so damn hard to be useful and cheerful and perfect… I couldn’t not see it.

Damn it.

She woke before me this morning—first time that had happened. I found her by the window, wrapped in a blanket, staring out at the endless white. Her hair was down, messy from sleep, and without her performance smile, she looked younger. Sadder. Real.

“Can’t sleep?” I asked.

She jumped, pulled the blanket tighter. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.” I moved to the kitchen, started coffee. “Storm’s supposed to break tomorrow. Roads’ll be clear by Friday.”

“That’s good.” But she didn’t sound relieved. She sounded… lost.

“You okay?”

“Fine! I’m fine.”

There it was. That automatic response. That shield.

I poured two cups of coffee, brought one to her. She took it with both hands, grateful.

“You say that a lot,” I observed.

“Say what?”

“That you’re fine. That everything’s fine.”

“Because it is.”

“Is it?”

She looked at me—really looked—and for a second I saw something crack. Something real breaking through.

“I’m stuck in a cabin with a stranger during a blizzard and my career is probably falling apart and I can’t control anything and I—” She stopped. Breathed. Reset. Smile clicked back into place. “But it’s fine. It’s all fine.”

“Hailey.”

“What?”

“You don’t have to do that here.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend. Perform. Whatever you want to call it. It’s just us. I don’t care if you’re not fine.”

Her laugh was brittle. “Everyone cares if you’re not fine. People don’t like messy. They like happy. Useful. Easy. So that’s what I give them.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is. But it works.”

“Does it?”

She didn’t answer. Just stared into her coffee like it held answers.

I should’ve left it alone. Should’ve backed off. But something about the way she looked—small and tired and still trying so hard—it bothered me.

“Who taught you that?” I asked. “That you had to be happy to be worth keeping?”

Her head snapped up. Eyes wide. Defensive.

“I don’t—that’s not—”

“Forget it. Not my business.”

I turned to go but she spoke quietly: “Foster care.”

I stopped.

“I was in the system from five to eighteen,” she continued, voice flat. “Six different placements. And I learned pretty quick that the easy kids—the happy kids—they got kept longer. Got treated better. Got—” Her voice caught. “Got chosen.”

Something in my chest tightened.

“And you weren’t chosen.”

“Not permanently. Not—not in the way that mattered.” She set down her coffee, wrapped her arms around herself. “There was one family. When I was ten. They said I could call them Mom and Dad. I unpacked my suitcase for the first time in five years. I thought—I thought that was it. That was home.”

I didn’t ask what happened. I could see it in her face.

“They got pregnant,” she said. “Six months after I moved in. And suddenly I was—inconvenient. Too much. In the way of their real family. So they sent me back.”

“Jesus.”

“I still have the suitcase I packed that day. It’s—” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It’s pathetic, right? I’m twenty-seven years old and I kept the suitcase because it reminds me—”

“Reminds you of what?”

“That I’m always ready to be returned.”

The words hit like a punch.

I understood that. Differently, but I understood it. The fear of being too much. Not enough. The wrong thing at the wrong time. The belief that you were fundamentally broken in ways that made you unworthy of keeping.

Vanessa’s voice echoed in my memory: “You’re broken, Reid. And I can’t watch you destroy yourself.”

Two weeks after the building collapse. Two weeks after my world fell apart. And she’d left.

Proven what I’d always suspected: I wasn’t worth staying for. Not when things got hard. Not when I wasn’t successful and confident and whole.

“I get it,” I said quietly.

Hailey looked at me with surprise. “You do?”

“Different reasons. Same fear.”

“What’s your reason?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The words stuck in my throat like concrete and steel and the sound of—

I shook my head. “Not ready to talk about it.”

“That’s fair.” She studied me with those hazel eyes, seeing too much. “But you get it. The being broken thing.”

“Yeah.”

“The being too much thing.”

“Yeah.”

“The—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The being scared that if people really see you, they’ll leave.”

“Yeah.”

We stood there in the gray morning light, two broken people recognizing each other’s damage, and something shifted.

The antagonism faded. The walls—not down, but… thinner. Translucent instead of solid.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About whatever happened to you.”

“I’m sorry about your shitty foster family.”

“Which one?” She smiled—a real smile, sad but genuine. “I had a few.”

“All of them, then.”

“Thanks.” She wrapped the blanket tighter. “This is weird, right? We barely know each other but I just—I told you things I don’t usually tell people.”

“Cabin fever,” I suggested. “Forced proximity. Nowhere to hide.”

“Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Or maybe it’s easier to be honest with someone who gets it. The broken thing.”

“Maybe.”

The fire needed tending. I moved to it, added logs, poked at the embers. Gave us both space from the intensity of the conversation.

When I looked back, she was organizing something on the counter—nervous energy, need to control—and I realized:

She’d been useful yesterday. Really useful. Not just with the food inventory and firewood stacking, but with her presence. With her trying. With her—

With her not giving up even when she was scared and out of her element.

That took strength. Different strength than survival skills or physical ability. But strength nonetheless.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up.

“You’re doing good. With—” I gestured vaguely. “With this. Being stuck here. Adapting. You’re handling it better than most people would.”

Her smile was tentative but real. “Thanks. That—that means a lot, actually.”

“I mean it.”

“I know. That’s why it means a lot.”

We held eye contact for a beat too long. Something flickered between us—awareness, maybe. Recognition. The beginning of something I wasn’t ready to name.

I looked away first.

“I need to check the chimney,” I said. “Make sure snow hasn’t blocked it. Smoke needs somewhere to go.”

“Can I help?”

I almost said no. Almost went back to keeping her safely inside where she couldn’t be a liability. But something stopped me.

She needed to be useful. Needed to feel capable. Needed—

Needed not to be treated like she was too much or in the way.

“Yeah,” I said. “You can help.”

Her whole face lit up. Like I’d given her something precious instead of just asking her to hold a ladder.

That look did something to me. Something uncomfortable. Something that felt like caring.

Damn it.

We bundled up—her coat was still inadequate, so I gave her one of my spare jackets. It swallowed her, sleeves hanging past her hands, but she beamed like I’d given her haute couture.

“Warm?” I asked.

“Very. Thank you.”

Outside, the world was still white and hostile. Wind had died down but snow kept falling. We’d gotten maybe another foot overnight.

I set up the ladder against the cabin. “Hold this. Don’t let it slip.”

“Got it.” She braced it with both hands, serious and focused.

I climbed up to check the chimney. Snow had drifted against it but hadn’t blocked it. I cleared what I could, then climbed down.

“All good?” she asked.

“Yeah. We won’t suffocate in our sleep.”

“That’s always nice.”

Was that—was she making a joke? Dry humor from the relentlessly optimistic event planner?

I looked at her. She was smiling—a different smile. Less performance, more genuine amusement.

“Was that a joke?” I asked.

“Maybe. You’re not the only one who can be sarcastic.”

“Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

That was true. And I was realizing—against my better judgment—that I wanted to know more.

Wanted to know who she was under the performance. What she liked. What made her laugh for real, not just polite social laughter. What she—

Stop, I told myself. Don’t go there. Don’t get attached. Don’t—

Don’t care.

But it was too late for that. I already cared.

Damn it.

Back inside, we made lunch together. She chopped vegetables—still perfectly uniform, still more precise than necessary—and I cooked. We’d developed a rhythm. Comfortable silence punctuated by occasional practical conversation.

“Reid?” she asked while we were eating.

“Yeah?”

“Why did you agree to host the wedding?”

“Parker asked.”

“That’s it? You just—agreed because he asked?”

“Parker’s family. Not blood, but—family. When family asks, you say yes.”

“Even when it’s inconvenient?”

“Especially then. That’s what family does.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “I wouldn’t know.”

“About family?”

“About people who show up when it’s inconvenient. People who—who stay even when it’s hard.” She set down her spoon. “Morgan’s the closest I’ve got. She’s been there for ten years. Through everything. And I still wake up sometimes expecting her to text me that she’s done. That I’m too much. That—”

“That you’ve been returned,” I finished quietly.

“Yeah.”

“She’s not going to do that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because real family doesn’t leave when things get hard. They show up. They stay. They—” I stopped, thinking of Rose. Wade. Parker. The people who’d stuck around even when I’d tried to push them away. “They fight for you even when you’ve given up on yourself.”

“Is that what Parker’s doing? Fighting for you?”

Too perceptive. She saw too much.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “He’s stubborn like that.”

“Rose too. She talked about you like you matter. Like she’s not giving up on you even though you’re—” She stopped herself.

“Even though I’m what?”

“Even though you’re hiding up here.”

Direct. Honest. No performance.

I should’ve been annoyed. Should’ve shut her down. Should’ve—

Should’ve done a lot of things I didn’t do.

Instead I said: “Yeah. She’s stubborn too.”

“You’re lucky. To have people who fight for you.”

“You have Morgan.”

“I have Morgan. One person. You have Rose and Wade and Parker and probably others I don’t know about. You have—you have a whole network of people who care. And you’re up here alone anyway.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because they’re better off without me.”

The words came out before I could stop them. Raw. True. The belief I’d carried for three years.

Hailey set down her spoon and looked at me with something like understanding. “That’s not true.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know what it looks like when someone’s punishing themselves. And Reid? That’s what this is. Isolation as penance. Distance as protection. But you’re not protecting them. You’re just—you’re just making yourself smaller. Quieter. Less. And that doesn’t actually help anyone.”

She was right. I knew she was right. Had been told the same thing by Wade and Rose and Parker and—

And Vanessa, before she left. Before I proved her right about being broken.

“You don’t know what I did,” I said.

“You’re right. I don’t. But I know what you’re doing now. And this?” She gestured around the cabin. “This isn’t healing. This is hiding.”

“Says the woman who performs happiness so she won’t get returned.”

It was a low blow. I saw it land. Saw her flinch.

“You’re right,” she said quietly. “I do that. I perform. I hide behind sunshine. But at least I know I’m doing it. At least I’m trying to connect even if it’s not real. You’re not even trying.”

“Because trying leads to failure.”

“So does not trying. At least if you try, you might—you might build something real.”

“Or destroy it.”

“Or destroy it,” she agreed. “But isn’t the trying worth the risk?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” I stopped. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t tell her about the building collapse, the injuries, the guilt that lived in my chest like collapsed concrete. Couldn’t—

“Because the last time I tried, people got hurt,” I said instead. “Because I’m good at destroying things. Not building them.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I’m starting to.”

That was the problem. She was starting to see me. Really see me. And I was starting to see her.

And seeing led to caring and caring led to—

Led to exactly what I’d spent three years avoiding.

I stood up abruptly. “I need to check the generator.”

It was an excuse. A retreat. She knew it and I knew it.

But she let me go.

I spent the next hour outside in the cold, checking things that didn’t need checking, avoiding the cabin and the woman in it who saw too much.

Who made me think maybe, just maybe, isolation wasn’t the answer.